Navillera (2021)

What a heartwarming drama! I'd passed by this drama on Netflix many times but seeing the high reviews on MDL made me decide to give it a go. The cast did such a wonderful job in portraying their characters, especially Park In Hwan (the scenes in which he forgets who he is are so believable that I had to remind myself he was acting!). I do wish they had Chaerok work on his anger management though. Even though he does usually mean well, his attitude would totally be unacceptable in my eyes, especially towards someone so much older. Overall, I loved the development of the plot and the characters, and appreciated that the ending really tied everything together rather than leaving things feel like they were unfinished.

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Have a box of tissues nearby!

This was such a beautiful series. The acting was suberb and the story was quite beautiful. The message of following your heart and never giving up on your dreams regardless of your age, doubts, or fears was also evident. I felt the relationship between the old man wanting to fufill his life dream, and the young man persuing his dream had a "karate kid vibe" to it. The respect and love they had towards each other was portrayed beautifully. I cannot say enough about the beauty of this story. It made me feel so many emotions, and I found myself laughing and crying so many times. Thank you for such a beautiful story with outstanding performances from the cast. ❤️

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It is never too late!

In this fast-paced world, there are times when one has to put their dreams and desires on the back-burner for the sake of survival. And unfortunately during the race for survival one forgets that their dreams are important, that they matter. They forget that there is always time, as long as you are alive there is time, and that it is never too late. No matter the age, era, or phase of life, it is never too late to do what your heart desires, what your inner being craves!
This is what Navillera is about; an old man who struggled all his life for the sake of the survival of his family deciding to do what his soul craved, what he believed was him, what made him happy despite all the opposition and protests. It is about him deciding that since I am alive, it isn't too late!
The writing, the cast, the acting, the OST, and even the cinematography were all a cherry on top of the already perfect cake that was the storyline!
The way this story about this old man and his dream made me feel, I truly have no words. Of all the shows and movies I have watched as well as books I have read, very few have made me feel what this show made me feel. It is a show that will stay with me, the feelings it invoked, the warmth it made me feel inside, all of these will stay with me for life!

This is a show that I truly believe should not be missed out on upon!

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Remarkable...until it wasn't (vague spoilers)

It had me until the last three episodes, where they decided to give a very factually inaccurate account of an illness's progression, jumping and oscillating between far separate stages. I understand the need to create tension and tragedy and happy release, but it simply was too far beyond reason for me to accept. Either the early portrayal of the illness was mischaracterized or the jumps and oscillations were incorrect. Though the feelings were there due to how well the characters draw you in early on, it lacked the resolution and connection that the early episodes so well established. It needed four more episodes and a better written climax and denouement. It is sad that it did not get the ending that the first half deserved.

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Excellent drama and must watch

Amazing drama.. Song Kang and Park In Hwan are wow. I don’t know how much effect they kept to do this amazing ballet but every thing paid off.
Direction, story, specially dialogues are awesome.
The way story takes turns and with so much emotion is really touching. Every special moment in this series will make you remember or relate your self to your life.
If you are planning to motivate your self or to give yourself a bit push but don’t know where to start. The dialogues in this drama will help you.
I loved Song Kang acting so much in this drama.. and Mr.Park will make you feel every inch in your life.
This series made me to cry. And made me to push myself a lot. I’m very much glad I watched it.
Thank you team for this amazing series. A true beautiful butterfly

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The most heart warming K-drama I've ever watched!!! It's never too late to achieve your dreams :)

So this is my very first time to write a review
for a K-Drama and honestly I was hesitant to watch it at first because I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it, but I still
went ahead and watch it anyway. And guess what? It was the best decision I've ever made. I LOVE LOVE
LOOOOOVE this drama. Watching this drama was
quite an adventure, it made me smile, laugh, and most of the time bawl. Because this drama is full of
warmth, it's very light and family oriented as well. I
love the friendship of Harabeoji and Chae Rok, it's
very wholesome. It also made me realize that it's
never too late to make all your dreams come true,
you can still make them happen no matter how old or young you are. That's why I definitely recommend
this drama!!! It's actually 11/10 for me. That's how
much it touched my heart ❤❤❤

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Despite our Limitations we can All Soar-Inspirational Drama

Our lives are filled with limitations--mental and physical boundaries each individual possesses that they cannot change, however despite these limitations we still have a differing range of control within our lives. In our life, although we may not control the outcome, we can control the present actions we take toward reaching a goal.

There are those of us who are forced to give up on prior dreams. No matter the reason, whether it’s money, age, or health, we’ve all faced struggles and limitations that have brought us back to a tragic reality. In the Drama Navillera, we are told that, yes there are harsh realities, but as long as we are still alive and breathing there is still time to pursue our goals. The only limitations that truly stop us from achieving a goal are the ones we’ve set up for ourselves, within our minds or societal expectations about pursuing certain skills

The drama Navillera is a metaphor for life. Through the sport of ballet, we can take the teachings of the show and place them into any of our real-world situations. Although I have never done ballet, this drama struck a chord with me and the hobbies and careers I have chosen in life.

The fact of life is that we are all bound by our limitations, but the biggest limitation is not the physical, but the mental boundaries we place on ourselves about what we cannot achieve. In the present, we can still carve out our future with persistence. We can set small but realistic goals to build our future and fight against our limitations. In Navillera Deol-Chul’s is to soar, but he knew that to do so he would have to put in the effort to learn the fundamentals of ballet, and so through the help of Chae-rok, but more importantly through Deol-Chul’s own perseverance and persistence towards achieving his goals, he is able to learn ballet.

Freedom of expression can take forms in multiple fashions, but in a world where there are boundless opportunities for self-expression, it begs the question: what defines success? Is it following one’s passions, reaching fame and stardom, and earning a lot of money? Navillera explores the open-ended nature of success and how each individual has to come to their own definition of what success means to them.

Here is one of the main questions that the drama wants the audience to ponder: is a 23-year-old ballerino successful and a 70-year-old amateur ballerino unsuccessful? It becomes clear that the answer to this question is no and that ballet, whether it be professional or amateur, is meaningful to individuals despite age and skill level. Success becomes something that isn’t measured by age or skill level, but by the meaning, it has for each individual and the amount of effort they are willing to put into their desired goal.

Time is a limitation that we all have to face. On the adjacent side of time, is inevitably regret. The regret of not starting early, or not putting in more effort, of living with the fact that you cannot go back in time to pursue something you wanted to. However, despite this tragic reality, we can still hold onto our present and future. If we set past our own limitations of society and what it has deemed as ‘silly’ or ‘unattainable’, we can accomplish our goals.


The reminder for all of us, after watching this drama, is that limitations and struggles are inevitable--a part of life. Just like a Nabi (Butterfly, 나비) we can also soar towards our individual goals.

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A Perfect Drama to get into dramas

This was actually the first drama I watched since I originally read the webcomic. I was unsure how well the adaption would be, but they picked the perfect people to play the parts. This was my introduction to Song Kang as an actor and he blows his role out of the water. His acting was phenomenal and I felt his emotions as the episodes went on. The man playing the grandpa was absolutely adorable and I couldn't imagine anyone else playing them. You see a male on a role of ballet which is sometimes more female oriented and the show gives us a journey of someone following a dream even when everyone tells you not to. It is wholesome and great, with good drama, but has the perfect balance of morality and portrayal of events many people have suffered through as well. I definitely recommend this to anyone, though if you cry easy you may want to bring tissues!

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Intergenerational Friendship

The drama has deuteragonists 23 year old aspiring ballerino Chae Rok and 70 year old Deok Chul whose love for ballet was re-ignited when he saw the former practice, but it's mostly centered around the journey of the latter. Song Kang's 6 months training really shows in the scenes that fully show his face while gracefully dancing. The dance teacher Ki Seung Joo was smart to assign Deok Chul as Chae Rok's manager exchange for Chae Rok teaching Deok Chul to dance. It intermingles their dynamic which is already complicated by the very age hierarchical culture even more so. Even the teacher had to stop yelling at the students when the newest student of the studio, but the eldest Deok Chul asks him to. Deok Chul is at once a sunbae/teacher and a grandson like figure, even more so after he meets Deok Chul's wife Hae Nam who will always have him sit down for dinner with them and sweetly includes him in the yearly family citron tea gifting. We see Deok Chul as a young man looking upon the aged, hunched back back of his elderly father that he then scrubs in the bath house as his own is being scrubbed by Chae Rok. He's able to give a lot of perspective for Chae Rok as well as Ho Beom, both of whom had suffered misguided abusive punishment from Chae Rok's father who was their soccer coach, a mis step that he had been jailed for. They were both able to make peace with what had happened and the changed person their former coach had become in order to move on with their own life and ambitions. I love that at no point do they push a romance on Chae Rok with Deok Chul's granddaughter Eun Ho who was previously his co-worker at the cafe before she was let go and he quit to focus on ballet. They rather learn from each other how to cope with the difficulties and their shared love for Deok Chul instead. I hope he had saved up enough money to live on because it didn't make any sense for the his teacher Li to get angry for him holding down a part time job when even though he waived any school fees for Chae Rok, he's not housing or feeding him. The guy has been having to pay his own bills since his dad went to jail and his mom passed while he was still in high school.

Both Chae Rok and Deok Chul are outrunning time in their respective points in life. Chae Rok needs to get into a professional ballet company as soon as he can as he already started 10 years later than most ballet dancers, despite being pretty much a natural prodigy quickly picking up ballet in 1 year, he's already 3 years in and ballet dancers retire very early for various reasons. His own teacher was forced to retire early due to a career ending injury. Deok Chul is outrunning his deteriorating mind from Alzheimer's. He had watched his friend decline and die and have attended many funerals of his peers. One of his episodes led him to Chae Rok, which lit the spark in him to finally soar like he had seen his first ballerino when he was a child. Chae Rok refers to Deok Chul as grandfather, which is a way to refer to an elderly man, but he has absolutely taken on the responsibility of a grandson to care for Deok Chul as best as he can once he tearfully finds out through Deok Chul's notebook, even if it breaks him a bit as taking care of a person who suffers from Alzheimer's is intense for anyone. He tries to respect Deok Chul keeping the information to himself until the symptoms become too severe and he reveals it to Deok Chul's youngest, the 40 year old doctor who hasn't recovered from his ptsd from a patient death. All of the adult children's issues are tied back to and resolved with Deok Chul well, strengthening their understanding and relationship with each other and each other. Although his wife and two eldest children were emotionally violent in their refusal to accept his ballet dream, his youngest, his children in-law, and his granddaughter thought were impressed, and everyone else eventually came around to supporting him, especially after his symptoms could not be kept from the others any longer. Deok Chul was able to realize his dream with the support of his entire family and Chae Rok right beside him and Chae Rok is able to leave the airport towards his own dreams with the love of his father, his best friend, his ballet teachers, and Deok Chul plus the family members that tagged along.

The ending is very touching as 3 years later, Chae Rok made top dancer within a year as teacher Ki predicted returns to visit Deok Chul who is fully in Alzheimer's state and Deok Chul remembers ballet through muscle memory as he sees him. It's kind of sad his wish to be living in a nursing home while he was still lucid wasn't respected as he's at home under the care of his also elderly wife who has a hard time keeping an eye on him at all times. His daughter and son in law offered to care for him too, but they're not around. Deok Chul wanders the streets delivering what he thinks are letters to the consternation of the people around the area and it looks dangerous as he walks to a train crossing where he runs into Chae Rok. The writing of the various friendships and familial relationships are good, but the pacing can feel pretty slow and Chae Rok didn't get as much focus, but all the ballet focused sections were fascinating.

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I was watching, and then I started crying

70 year old and a dream.

Deokchul is the cutest 70 year old man I've ever seen, so cheerful, even when everything seems hopeless.. He is the most accurate/ positive elder representation I've seen in a drama so far. so passionate and thoughtful, yet it shows how he hasn't always been this optimistic, and it's decades of working hard and pushing his own personal dreams to the side in order to satisfy everyone's expectations.

as a fellow artist with many dreams that seem so far out of my reach, this drama hit deep in my core.
if you're like me, like Deokchul, like those who work at a job they don't like but can't drop because money controls what they can or can't do, like students who are not sure they're going down the right path but they are unfortunately not granted second chances, like the kids that feel like they owe success to their parents, etc...

if you need to feel like you've been heard ; this one is gonna hurt but it's gonna feel so right.

side note : I'm so glad we finally get to see Song Kang in a role that truly embraces his potential as an actor. His character is hardworking and stubborn, and I don't expect any less from a ballet dancer.

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The cutest 'odd couple', and also a lovely slice of life

A good show makes it easy to suspend all disbelief. The dancing was mostly cringey and underwhelming, but I didn't care one bit because I was so invested in the characters. I lost count of how many times that old man choked me up. The young male lead didn't have as much to do, but he was well cast and very appealing. Good chemistry.

I had only a couple of difficulties with this.

(1) In early episodes, the dynamics between the old man, his wife, and eldest son were difficult to understand. Small-mindedness and arrogance were given as superficial explanations for the extreme behavior initially. The deeper issues seemed to involve a cultural specificity that I couldn't grasp entirely. Later on, the wife's and son's transformations felt rather sudden and not entirely credible.

(2) The show's pacing was mostly excellent, but some of the later episodes felt so, so draggy. Nothing much was happening and there were too many montages, testing my patience severely. The story was predictable, but that was OK. I was glad the writers didn't distract from the main story by adding unnecessary romance.

Overall, I'd recommend this highly.

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